Advent, Day 6

Christmas Linguini.

"Hi. My name is Kathy, and I am a recovering cookaholic." I love to cook. Have I mentioned before that to me, a meal, or even just one dish, is a piece of art. If I may say so myself, I am a fairly decent cook. At least, that is what I thought until . . .

Tuesday. We had a small luncheon at the church to promote an event to some local pastors. I was to shop and cook for the meal. A cream sauce on pasta was requested. Well, I've not made an alfredo or any other kind of cream sauce, so I looked up some recipes online. One recipe I found suggested combining alfredo with pesto for a tasty meal. I thought, "Great! I can get a regular basil pesto (green), and a sun-dried tomato pesto (red), and some prepackaged alfredo sauce, and thus make Christmas Linguini for the group!" Seems simple, eh?

The plan was to also do some garlic bread, and a simple salad. Monday night, I had already made three kinds of biscotti for the event (after practicing - see Day 4) and these were delicious.

Well, I layed out the biscotti -- looked great! Then poured balsamic dressing on the romaine lettuce and topped it with just a little parmegiano reggiano. Got the pasta cooking, and put the alfredo sauce into two pans and began simmering it. Panicked and decided not to do the garlic bread -- mistake because we had no margarine. The pasta sauces looked beautiful. In fact, when combined with the pasta, they looked great. However, the texture was absolutely horrendous. Quite starchy. In fact, usually when your dinner guests are quiet, it is a compliment about the quality of the food. In this case, I'm quite sure their tongues were simply stuck to the roofs of their mouths - thus, preventing them from speaking at all.

Because the pasta did not turn out very good, the bread without margarine or butter seemed pretty bland, and the simple salad seemed cheap. The only saving grace was the biscotti -- they say, always end on a good note. For sure it was the only good note of the meal!

Christmas Linguini -- great in theory, but practical application needs work!